Analyst: Patriarch Suggests that the German-French Plan is Unacceptable for the Church

Patriarch Porfirije (BETAPHOTO/AMIR HAMZAGIC)

Historian Aleksandar Rakovic said on March 27 that the head of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Porfirije, suggesting in his opening speech at the beginning of a conference on Kosovo and Metohija that the German-French plan was unacceptable for the church.

"In his address, Patriarch Porfirije only reaffirmed, for the umpteenth time, that the Church does not accept the German-French plan, which aims to turn the status of the Church in Kosovo and Metohija into a political issue," Rakovic, an analyst specializing in church developments, said to BETA.

Porfirije said on March 26 that after eight centuries of uninterrupted presence in the territory of Kosovo and Metohija, the Serbian Orthodox Church cannot be part of any political negotiations and agreements on the status of Kosovo, despite a view that the legal status of the Church might be the most complex political issue in the talks about Kosovo.

One of the provisions of the German-French plan, or rather, the European plan for normalization of relations between Kosovo and Serbia, provides that Belgrade and Pristina should "formalize the status of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Kosovo, offering also a strong level of protection to the Serb religious and cultural heritage sites, in line with the existing European models.”